D-Beam responsiveness

[losmusicanos]

Hi all!

A question to all the people who own recent Roland stuff. Especially the instruments with the D-Beam.

I was wondering how responsive it was to FAST MOVEMENTS. Does it react well?

For example if you make your hand tremble heavily and quickly over the D-Beam, will it follow what you do or will it get overloaded by the amount of position changes?

(I hope it all makes sense and that my words won't be misinterpreted lol)

[Staccato]

Hm, I have only tried Juno-D and I think it works quite okey.. you can set some settings for how easy it will react, but I think you need some practice cause it only registrers movements in a special area. If you want some more info, download a manual from Roland´s homepage to some of the machines that have the D-beam.. there are more precise info about how far it works and stuff!

[Limited]

I've got an AX-7 with d-beam controller. As Staccato already mentioned, you got to practice a bit to find out where to put your fingers/hand. However, it reacts without noticeable delay to your movements. But it only notices vertical movements (far and near), not horizontal changes.

[Grey Loki]

I use a VA-7 with the D-Beam controller, and I have to say, not only is it a GREAT performance tool, it's also VERY responsive - slight movements DO affect your sound, and it is quite possible to do vibrato just by wobbling your hand over the top. It's very difficult to trigger the beam with just a finger though, as it isn't really wide enough for the beam to recognise.

[EloHiR ElEnDIl]

I've got an AX-7 with d-beam controller. As Staccato already mentioned, you got to practice a bit to find out where to put your fingers/hand. However, it reacts without noticeable delay to your movements. But it only notices vertical movements (far and near), not horizontal changes.

My Rs-50's does respond to "horizontal" movements.

[losmusicanos]

Vertical-only movements of the hand, I knew that. I wanted to know how fast the movements could be and my question is answered in this thread. Thanks! :wink:

[GlassDream]

Also keep in mind, the responsiveness is also determined by how much direct light it actually touching the D Beam Sensors itself. It meantions that in the manual, that under different light circumstances,it will react more or less sentively. If you think it's less responsive, then you can easily go in tot he System Control menu, and add more Sensitivity (or less if needed).

So just to let you know, the option is always there to tweak those sorts of things as well.

[TheMagician]

I had a RS-70 and the D-beam did respond pretty well to subtle fast movements to get a light vibrato or subtle effects as well as big movements - in fact I thought it worked better with smaller faster movements.

[pmarafio]

I had the VSynth with dual D-Beams. At first I was quite excited about using it as a controller. Over time, I found myself using them less and less.

The problem is that they are not very adjustable - they're far too sensitive IMO. Also, on the VSynth, the two beams are right next to eachother and it is difficult to effectively operate them independently.

What really frustrated me though was that you cannot use the VSynth as the bottom keyboard in a two keyboard setup. The upper board will continuously trigger the DBeam unless the boards are feet apart - which is not practical on a live rig! I ended up turning the DBeams off as a result.

Another good idea from Roland that should have been a bit more battle tested on stage with real musicians before they released it!

[Shreddy]

I have the Dbeam on my XV88 and its the bottom board on my home rig with a Juno6 above it. If you placing the board on the bottom of a setup you want to move the top board further back so its not getting triggered by the top board. My stand is an Iq2000 with allows me to configure it anyway possible which helps quite a bit. If I had a va synth I wouldnt want it as a bottom board in a 2 board setup, your hiding all those glorious knobs and sliders.

There are some settings that you might want to edit with you dbeam, for me I was using it for a bend up. Its middle is not at 0 on my board its at 64, so I set my range from 64-128 (i think) and its better suited for me needs. I dont remember what the sensitivity was set for but its working fine for my needs.

Ed